Siblings
by Free.Spirit140
Summary: Maru gave a small smile at her victory, quickly schooling her features before climbing on behind her brother. Sometimes it honestly felt like she was the older sibling and not him, but, she concluded, he was scared of a lot of things too. Just like their mum. And, if he needed someone to just talk whenever he felt like the world was screaming at him, then she was happy to do that.


I have no idea what made this thought come into my head but I just wanted to write a brother sister moment between Sebastian and Maru and this came to mind. Sebastian is 18 and Maru is 15 in this.

I honestly wrote this as a spare of the moment thing. It probably sucks because it's the middle of the night lmao. If you see any mistakes please let me know, I don't have a beta reader.

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"I know you went into the lab Sebastian, you'd be better off owning up to it now!" Demetrius' voice rang down the hall and through the closed door to Maru's room.

Maru sighed, placing her tools down and slotting her latest invention into her draw, ready to accept that the odds of getting any work done tonight were practically zero. She moved herself off her desk chair and onto her bed, grabbing her book off the nightstand and trying to focus on the sound of the rain hitting the window and not the yelling currently taking place on the other side of her bedroom door.

"Why would I want to go into your shitty lab for?!" Sebastian's voice retorted, Maru winced "At most I walk past the thing when I go to the kitchen, but I can stop needing to eat and drink if you think my footsteps are disturbing your precious experiments!"

"Watch your language!" Demetrius snapped "And don't get smart with me, you know full well that you walking past the lab is not what I'm talking about! One of my experiments has been tampered with and your mother insists she was not the one that did it!"

"Well it wasn't me either! Why not go question Maru instead of accusing me?!" Maru sunk further down the headboard at the mention of her name. She wanted nothing to do with this fight, she was staying out of it.

"No one is accusing you Sebby, we're just trying to get to the bottom of this," Robbin's reasoned, her tone far calmer than the two shouting males she was talking to but she still had to raise her voice to be heard over Demetrius' protest.

"Maru knows better than to go into the lab unsupervised!"

"And you're saying I don't?!" Sebastian demanded.

There was a pause, a moment of tension that even Maru could feel from her seat on her bed, and then

"I fucking knew it. I knew it! You both think I did it! You didn't even question perfect Maru because she could do no wrong, meanwhile I'm the problem child with an attitude simply because I dared to suggest that it could have been her! Well you know what? Fuck this! I can tell when I'm not wanted!"

Demetrius called out a protest to the use of language which went unheard behind Robbin's desperate cry of "Sebby, wait a second!" and then the front door slammed closed.

"Let go Demetrius, I have to go after him!" Robbin's much quieter voice met Maru's ears after a moment's silence, it sounded strained and tired even from so far away, as if she had been crying for years and not just a few seconds.

"Let him get some air, you can't keep running after him when he gets like this," Demetrius reasoned "He's an adult now, he needs to learn how to handle his emotions himself."

Maru felt a small stone drop into her stomach at the sound of the motorbike engine sputtering to life from the other side of her door to the garden, biting her lip slightly at the unhealthy sounds of the engine. It needed fule, possibly a good oiling, and a couple of bolts tightening if she was hearing right. It definitely wasn't up for being ridden today, especially not by an emotional eighteen year old with no idea where he was going. At night. In the rain. Blast it all.

She quickly grabbed her raincoat from the small peg she kept it on by her door and stepped into her rain boot. She threw a look at her door, nervously considering the consequences if she was discovered to have gone out in the middle of the night without telling anyone, before slipping outside. It was worth the risk.

One of the many bright sides to living in the mountain house they lived in, was the lack of any kind of traffic due to a lack of roads. It made it good for stargazing, it meant it was quiet, it generally meant that anyone that could be found loitering by the house was a friend or a town member you at least knew the name of.

An additional benefit to the lack of roads, Maru was now discovering, was that it forced her brother to ride slowly through the town thanks to the cobblestones that made up the branching path system. At a fast jog Maru had caught up to Sebastian just as he was entering the Bus stop, from here it was a smooth road to the city so it was pretty clear that if she wanted to get his attention she would have to do so now.

"Sebastian!" She called, hoping that she could be heard over the sound of the self-refurbished engine. She would have to get Sam to convince Seb he needed to buy a brand new one when he had the money.

He stopped, and Maru, for the first time ever, felt a small pang of relief that he never wore a helmet.

"Where are you going?" Maru asked, moving so she was in front of the now stationary motorbike, an attempt at making carrying on and ignoring her impossible for the older boy.

His eyes hardened at the sight of her and he immediately turned the handlebars, ready to maneuver around her. Maru stepped in his way again.

"I'm not going anywhere until you turn off the engine and talk about this rationally." Maru insisted, feeling a small surge in confidence at the way Sebastian's eyes widened.

He twisted the handlebars again so that the front tire was now pointing to where she had just been standing previously but before he could move Maru stepped in his way again. Sebastian huffed, seemingly defeated as he turned off the engine and kicked out the kickstand so that he could sit back a little and fold his arms across his chest.

"I have nothing to say to you." He finally spoke, eyes cold and words colder. Maru tried not to let the harsh way he had said 'you' get to her.

"Well I have a lot to say to you so if you want to get your point across first I suggest you start talking before I do." It was a bluff, she knew that, but she had to hope he didn't.

"If you're here to lecture me about how I talk to them, or about how I'm overreacting then you can save your breath," Sebastian stated "I'm sick to the back teeth of it."

"I wasn't here to lecture you." She wasn't exactly lying. She was mostly here to make sure he didn't get himself stranded in the middle of nowhere thanks to his barely functioning motorbike.

"Then what were you here for?!" Sebastian demanded, temper flaring as he swung himself off of the bike so he could approach her "To stop me?!"

"Well yeah." Maru confirmed "That bike needs some serious mending before it can be taken off on long trips with no destination in mind," Sebastian opened his mouth to argue so Maru quickly pressed on "And, I don't want to see my brother get hurt because he was riding whilst emotional in the pouring rain in the middle of the night." She folded her arms, trying to appear more intimidating "Without a helmet." she added as an afterthought

"Well then you came out here for nothing, I'm sick and tired of being the one blamed for everything around here and I don't want to deal with it anymore!" Sebastian seethed, grabbing the handlebars again and readying himself to get back onto the bike.

"My dad is just worked up because he only just found out about it!" Maru protested "I'm sure once he's calmed down he'll be a lot more ready to hear you out! At the moment he's just caught up in the idea that it had to be someone in the house."

"Someone in the house that doesn't include you!" Sebastian yelled, letting go of the handlebars whilst simultaneously throwing himself away from the bike.

The action caused the bike's, admittedly rather flimsy, kickstand to fail and the bike landed with a crunch and a thunk onto the graveled floor. Sebastian stared at it, chest noticeably heaving under his hoodie, fists clenched at his sides, the rain causing his hair to flatten against his forehead.

They stayed like that for a second, neither quite willing to break the silence that had followed the tension snap.

"Besides," Sebastian finally muttered, only just audible over the sound of the rain hitting Maru's raincoat hood "I don't give a shit what he thinks. He's not my dad so his opinion of me means jack shit to me." His voice cracked a bit and he moved to pick up the bike, noticeably wincing at the new, rather nasty, scuff marks down it's side.

Maru knew those words were said more to convince himself than her.

"It's the fact my mum thought it was me as well." He said bitterly, kicking out the kickstand of the bike and stepping away from it a little more carefully "It seems like she's always on his side nowadays, never mine. Always-" His voice cracked again and he brought his sleeve up to wipe under his nose "always his."

"He's her husband," Maru reasoned, taking a step towards her brother and trying to not be offended at the way he took a small step back "She already had one marrige fail right? She probably doesn't want to cause this one to fail as well."

Sebastian sniffed, pulling his hood a little more over his face, a rather pathetic attempt at hiding what he would want her to think was rain pouring down his cheeks. He simply stared at the back tire of his bike as if it was the most interesting yet depressing thing in the world. Maru stepped closer.

"She still loves you you know?" She assured "Mum really does love you, even if you think she doesn't. It's just," Maru stepped closer again "your dad affected her more than she lets on, I think. She doesn't want us to see it, because we're her kids," She took a step closer again so that now she was standing only a foot away from her brother "but she's scared of losing my dad as well."

Sebastian said nothing, switching his gaze from his bike tire to his shoes.

"Right now though?" Maru continued "Right now she's scared of losing you. She's scared because you keep pulling away no matter how much she tries to reach out. She's scared that she doesn't know you anymore. That she no longer knows what you're capable or not capable of doing because you've hidden yourself away from her." She knew she was getting too deep. She knew. But for once she was getting to say something she had been observing for years.

Sebastian chewed his lip, shuffling his shoe in the gravel.

"So are you going to let her carry on thinking that by going off into the night like you were planning to? Or are you going to come home, get some rest, and then talk things out when everyone is calmed down in the morning?"

Sebastian finally looked up at her, the previous spite and determination in them replaced by sheer exhaustion.

"I'll give you a lift back to the house," He finally relented, moving to get on his bike "before I get blamed for making you catch a cold."

Maru gave a small smile at her victory, quickly schooling her features before climbing on behind her brother. Sometimes it honestly felt like she was the older sibling and not him, but, she concluded, he was scared of a lot of things too. Just like their mum. And, if he needed someone to just talk whenever he felt like the world was screaming at him, then she was happy to be that someone for as long as he needed her.


End file.
